But don’t follow me, darling;
I’m not going where you need to go.
This bus doesn’t stop on freeway
overpasses. This bus barrels through
the night until it reaches its
final destination, comes to a stop,
is explored by voracious crabs
and enterprising sea birds. Don’t
follow me unless you want to come
to ruin on some stinking shore,
the least picturesque beach
in America, as declared byReaders Digest, in some foxed
issue I found in the garbage
behind a doctor’s office,
back when I was a scavenger.
Back and back and way back then.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And with that, I’m all caught up. This was for the PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 14. Prompt: a “follow” poem.

That’s what I might have said
in 1989 (which, as we all know,
is the year that, somewhere else,
Taylor Swift was busy being born),
even though I didn’t know whathegemony meant and, OK, since
we’re telling truths here, I’d
need to Google it today if I
wanted to front like I knew it
all along, its full meaning,
anything other than a vague
notion of its sense. But I
trafficked in vague notions
then, in 1989, of myself and
of the world, of what it was
that I wanted, the possible
futures I saw in the window
over the couch as I looked
at my reflection and sang
to myself so I could know if
I was any good at singing.

But someone like me always says
there’s no explanation for any of it,
nothing owed to us and nothing to be
expected, that life is a random bag
of facts and occurrences, many of them
ugly and completely unjust, because
there is no justice, no traffic cop.
Sometimes I really hate myself.
Sometimes I sound so smug, so much
like others of my type, the clichés
tumbling out of my mouth before I can
call them back. The truth is, we all
think in stereotypes and patterns.
I am no different. Neither are you.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Catching up. Last one for tonight. PAD Challenge, Day 16. Prompt: an explanation.

Today, I remembered
that the kids in my high school
used to play a card game
called Egyptian Rat Fuck.
The name popped into my head
while I was trying to remember
something else, though now
I forget what that was, and it seems
like there have been other times
just like this, though now I forget
what I remembered while I was
forgetting something else.
The net unravels even as
I patch it. It catches only
the least relevant fish, bony
and inedible, ridiculous. I didn’t
even intend to go fishing; I’m just
holding this net and need something
to occupy my hands while I try to
remember what I came here to do.